There is something reassuring about the Final Destination franchise. Just like the Saw series where they are constantly trying to make the killings more and more vomit inducingly elaborate, we have a familiar script and pleasantly surprising death scenes.By now you can sense it. There is a quietness in the air like everyone has held their breath. You become ultra aware and wide eyed. You know something is coming, and that thing is Fate in the shape of big fat Death.
In the unlikely event you don't know what this is about, this film is based on a series of unfortunate events. With the final installment (we assume) our latest group of kids are watching a car race when Nick has a vision that a car will crash. This will in turn cause other cars to veer off the track and through the barrier in to the crowd of spectators, killing them all in various horrifying ways including fire, decapitation and impalement. Nick snaps out of it but as his premonition begins to come true he tells his friends and gets them out of the stadium, just in time to see a ball of flames explode.
The kids are then very grateful to be alive and become carefree and live each day to the fullest. This is where the bikinis come out when they celebrate at the poolside party. They think they've escaped death but no, you can never escape death, mwa ha ha haaa. We then revisit one of the people who didn't die at the stadium, but should have.
This is where we see fate come in to play. Sharp knives and hooks don't just fall off the side board. Water doesn't just just find its way round corners in to electrical circuits. But in Final Destination land, they do. We've had it all, including speeding buses dashing into view to swipe down a main character. Maybe the most memorable in this instalment is the boy jumping in to the swimming pool after accidentally turning on the pool drainer. He jumps down to the bottom to retrieve a coin and gets sucked by his pants to the bottom. As the suction pressure increases, his internal organs get sucked and spat out through the vent. Nice.
I've been doing some research and a couple of years ago these kids had a premonition then they escaped death and then they all died anyway. That's fate for you.
I really like these films. I don't think any of them have lived up to the edge of surprise the first one had, but I thought this one was sound. And by sound I mean ridiculous, but enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed FD 1 & 2, but felt it dropped off precipitiously after that--and I think I know why, or at least have a theory. In the first couple of movies it seemed to me Death was more than just "a series of unfortunate events" (as you so appropriately noted), but rather had a real, malignant intelligence that was quite frightening--this wasn't just unlucky stuff that happened to people, this was a conscious, thinking force that was determined to *get* these kids. More than that, it was *angry* that they had evaded it before, hence it made their later demises even more sadistically horrible.
ReplyDeleteI think in the later films they forgot about this and it just became, in Homer Simpson's words, "a bunch of stuff that happened."
I really think the idea of Death as Stalker is a brilliant one, especially for the Teen audience it was largely aimed at--after all, this isn't Jason or a Zombie or some other kind of killer--this is DEATH, and even if you avoid him now, he's gonna get you one of these days. That's a bleak thought for feel-like-I'm-bulletproof teens to wrap their heads around; it's not too sunny for an old codger like me. ;)
Have not see this one yet, but the bit about the kid in the pool sounds similar to the story in Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted".
ReplyDeleteLove all these movies, but I see some of the Vicar's points. Then disagree cause I love all these movies.
ReplyDeletePart 1 does have that defiance of fate vs. free will, and Part 2 gives us some of the best kills (and humor) of the series. I love the all-out camp of Part 3 and had a fine time with 4. I get annoyed when people beg for the resurrection of the slasher genre, when this and Saw are perfectly fine evolutions. Yes, they're both series that are getting stale, but they each have a few installments that are far sounder than most of the F13 & Halloween series.
I get what you're saying. They've been done to death now, but they do still have something special about them
ReplyDeletePax - I've not read that one! I loved Survivors and Lullaby though.
I kinda wish I had seen this one in 3D so I could have been a little more wowed by the deaths, but I thought this one was a trial in patience outside of the deaths
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